Yesterday afternoon Congressman Ford appeared on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight to talk about the Dubai Ports deal and securing America.DOBBS: Joining me now with his thoughts on the Dubai ports deal, Congressman Harold Ford, he's running for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee and he's out with a new campaign ad attacking this deal.
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REP. HAROLD FORD (D), TENNESSEE: President Bush wants to sell this port and five others to the United Arab Emirates, a country that had diplomatic ties with the Taliban, the home of two 9/11 hijackers, whose banks wired money to the terrorists. I'm running for the Senate because we shouldn't outsource our national security to anyone.
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DOBBS: Congressman Ford says this deal is not a Democrat, a Republican issue. He calls it an American security issue. Joining me tonight from Capitol Hill, good to have you with us, Congressman.
FORD: Thanks for having me on and thanks for your honesty and your steadfastness and the way you forcefully handle this issue. You have prodded this along and should -- deserve a great deal of credit for it.
DOBBS: That's very kind of you, Congressman. Let's turn to this ports deal as a platform issue in your campaign. Is it to the people of Tennessee, is it resonating with them?
FORD: I think there's traction all across the country. And you know, Chuck Schumer deserves considerable credit as well, because this deal probably would have gone through. You raised it, he raised it and it's now forced my Republican colleagues to deal with it in a very serious way.
This is the one issue since I've been in Congress that -- or at least since George Bush has been president that has united Democrats and Republicans around the issue of national security. And it's my hope that, if indeed the Republicans are serious with what you reported earlier in your show, to come together to block this deal, we should do that right away.
DOBBS: You talked about the unity on this deal that has grown up in Congress and that's exactly right, yet you say it's not Republican or Democratic issue. This Republican White House is adamant. There is dug in on it, driving a commercial dealing, the likes of which I have not seen -- I have just not seen.
FORD: It's raised a lot of eyebrows and questions in my state amongst a lot of just ordinary people who wonder aloud if there are other motivations as part of this deal.
I don't want to go anywhere near making those kind of accusations but when you consider the outright anger and backlash against this, not from just from Congress, but from the American people, you will think the president would not turn a deaf ear.
But I tell you, he's suffering from two or three other things. One, the thought, or the suggestion that there were weapons of mass destructions. There were none. The fact that he said that we were not treating prisoners wrongly at Abu Ghraib. He happened to be wrong. And when he said that we had a real coherent strategy in Iraq, an exit strategy, he was wrong.
So all of this has caused much of his support bay, his key support base back in Tennessee to question him, which is why I think the backlash of this deal is so much stronger than they anticipated.
DOBBS: Let's talk about what Congressman Duncan Hunter, your colleague in the House, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he's saying the key infrastructure assets in this country, including the operation of terminals, some of which are operated by government-owned companies, which is another story in itself how it ever came to be. I think we in the national media deserve great blame for permitting that to go without recognition until now. Can you get on board with a Congressman Hunter on his legislation?
FORD: I will be. And we take blame. I take personal blame. Because I was unaware. I'm a member of Congress now for nine years and did not know that. I think many of us are probably in that boat. Now that we have learned, we should take steps to correct that.
As I have stated in my ad I don't believe we should outsource our security to anyone. Not Great Britain, not China, not Russia, not Mozambique and not the UAE.
This is not some racist or xenophobic or effort to take action against Muslim or Islam. We're the United States. And if you can't defend yourself, fund yourself, or power yourself which we clearly have issues and challenges with today, you have to ask the question, what kind of country are we and what are we becoming?
We should not outsource our national security and hopefully we will take steps this week to end this deal at least from Congress' standpoint and perspective.
DOBBS: Congressman Harold Ford, thanks for being here.
FORD: Thanks for having me.
